The internet is good for a lot of things: one of them is periodically dredging up old news and making it seem new, while another is stoking outrage.

These two things hit me simultaneously recently when the College Board's list of "101 Great Books Recommended for College-Bound Readers" re-circulated among book-ish types.

The College Board is most known as the purveyor of the SAT exam — which, in this college instructor's opinion, should be consigned to the dustbin of history — and at some point in the not too distant past created this list of books for the "college-bound."

The book is stuffed with classics: "Beowulf, "The Canterbury Tales," "Oedipus Rex," four plays by Shakespeare, and of course both "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey."

The most current book as far as I can tell is Toni Morrison's "Beloved," published in 1987.

But it's not the lack of currency that irks me, so much as the notion that such a list is a marker of what makes someone "college-bound." As with their signature test, this list sets up a barrier based in a fantasy of what separates those worthy of college from those who are not.

It has been long established that the SAT itself is not a reliable correlate to college success. It has shown to have both racial and socioeconomic bias, as people of means pay for expensive prep and tutoring that results in inflated scores. A much better predictor of college readiness is not a one-off aptitude test, but high school GPA, go figure.

If this list of books, which includes "Don Quixote," Dante's "Inferno," "Vanity Fair," "Madame Bovary," and "Moby-Dick," in addition to those above, is really what's recommended for the "college-bound" I know some English professors with Ph.D.s who aren't ready for college.

I do not dispute the cultural or literary worthiness of these texts. That is indisputable, but being college-bound shouldn't be about a checklist of books. Someone who is college-bound should be curious, should love reading, and therefore should eagerly seek out texts that feed this curiosity.

College is about what you plan to do, not what you've done.

We must give students the same kind of freedoms we routinely take for granted for ourselves. Reading literature should not be a chore, the books some kind of brain medicine. I can't imagine a more surefire way of defeating students than sticking slavishly to the College Board list.

Fortunately, the same day the College Board list resurfaced, the National Endowment for the Arts released an updated list of books for its Big Read program. Once hidebound in ways similar to the College Board list, the Big Read has adopted a stance that seeks to incorporate books that speak to what's happening in the world today alongside texts that inform our past.

This year's additions to the Big Read programming include Claudia Rankine's "Citizen: An American Lyric," and "Station Eleven" by Emily St. John Mandel, to go along with previously selected titles like "A Wizard of Earthsea" (Ursula K. LeGuin), "The Things They Carried" (Tim O'Brien) and "True Grit" (Charles Portis).

It's a list that invites readers of all kinds and demonstrates the variety of perspectives and experiences that knit the fabric of our nation. If I had to choose a list for the college-bound or non-college bound, I know where I stand.

Any time we frame books and reading as a wall to be scaled in order to achieve something, we are doomed, I say, doomed.

"Reading is fundamental." Remember that slogan? It's true, and not fundamental for success in school, or business, or anything else. It's fundamental because we are human.

John Warner's latest book is "Tough Day for the Army." Follow him on Twitter @Biblioracle

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The Biblioracle offers his recommendations

1. "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl

2. "The Lake House" by Kate Morton

3. "Learning to Walk in the Dark" by Barbara Brown Taylor

4. "Devotion" by Dani Shapiro

5. "Nora Webster" by Colm Toibin

— Karen H., Indianapolis

A list that illustrates what books can do to help illuminate the way in an uncertain world. My recommendation is a novel that doesn't do that so much as illustrate the difficulties and anxieties about navigating in our current climate. It gripped me completely and even gave me nightmares, which is high praise in my book: "Listen to Me" by Hannah Pittard.

1. "Winter Garden" by Kristin Hannah

2. "A Little Life" by Hanya Yanagihara

3. "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared" by Jonas Jonasson

4. "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Irin Carmon

5. "Hold Still" by Sally Mann

— Emma T., Kenosha

I have a feeling that Emma will enjoy the wit and sneaky depth of Sheila Heti's "How Should a Person Be?"

1. "Fool Me Once" by Harlan Coben

2. "The Wrong Side of Goodbye" by Michael Connelly

3. "Heat & Light" by Jennifer Haigh

4. "Wilde Lake" by Laura Lippman

5. "Underground Airlines" by Ben Winters

— Jim P., Aurora

"Before the Fall" by Noah Hawley is an ingeniously structured suspense novel where the bulk of the action happens in the opening chapter and the tension revolves around not what happens, but why it happened, and what it means. I think it's a good pick for Jim.